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Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It's weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.
In light of the film's recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film's otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.
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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”
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You will be successful in love.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 15 2022, @04:08PM (3 children)
Are they, though? What modern private enterprise kills their employees without repercussion?
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 15 2022, @04:45PM (2 children)
Coal mining. Oil rigs (especially at sea). Roofing. Underwater welding. Delivery drivers. Police are actually *way* down the list in terms of how dangerous their job is.
And virtually all of those jobs are done within US (or other major power) jurisdiction where modern safety regulations apply. No safety regulations in space except what the workers demand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2022, @05:52PM
Crab fishing in Alaska and logging are the two most dangerous professions. Farmers, landscapers, and garbage collectors are all in the top 10 as well.
NASA has very strict safety standards. They only ever hold SpaceX to them, but they do have them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 15 2022, @09:29PM
Astronauts are the first to profess that they accept the risks.
While I lived in Houston, they killed a couple of tank cleaners with fumes, but everybody was o.k. with the news because it was "contractors" (read: Mexicans). Not saying it's right, just sayin' that's how it is. Plenty of locals had scary tales to tell about fighting invisible fires and such at the plants, but strangely I never met, nor even heard of, an oil worker who was maimed or killed during the two years I was there, other than those two contractors on the TV news. Of course, Deepwater Horizon made the news, but so did 9-11. Taking a slightly more data driven approach: "A total of 120 fatal work injuries occurred in the oil and gas extraction industry in 2008. The three most frequent fatal events in 2008 were transportation incidents (41 percent), contact with objects and equipment (25 percent), and fires and explosions (15 percent)." - this out of approximately 150,000 workers, so 80 per 100,000. Transportation, aka car wrecks topping that list.
Coal miners: "In 2020 there were five occupational fatalities in the United States coal mining industry, among 63,612 U.S. coal miners" so, yeah, that's 8 per 100,000, sounds kinda high until you consider the lowest annual death rate for US adult males is in the 15-24 year old bracket at 100 per 100,000: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age-and-sex-in-the-us/ [statista.com]
Underwater welding: aka the deathwish profession (my father in law did this for a few weeks until he met a 9' shark on the job). That's a baddie, and the pay reflects it. Just like Alaska crab fishermen but without the reality-tv show potential because the camera crews couldn't cut it on site.
Delivery drivers: yep, we're still killing it on the road. But is it the job that's killing you, or the commute? ;->
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [cdc.gov]
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